BORN IN THE USA

            My parents named me Michael because in the Jewish faith it is customary to name with the first letter of a deceased relative.  I also have two middle names- Bruce Aaron; these come from my uncle and great grandfather, respectively. Michael means, “Who is like G-d”. If one were to walk up to someone and ask if they knew what their name meant, chances are they would respond with a no or a confused look. The fact that my name is “Michael” though does not mean that I automatically am like G-d. It is up to the mere mortal himself to decide who he becomes. Through a series of events, Jasmine discovers who she really is.

            The book begins with Jasmine referring to her future husband and their bank accounts. “Jane Ripplemeyer has a bank account. So does Jyoti Bijh, in a different city.” (Mukherjee, 7) The constant switching of names, from Punjabi to established American begins early on. The fact that “Jasmine” associates the name Jyoti Bijh as her own but states it is in a different city shows a great deal. One can wonder if she leaves her “American” self when she ever travels to India and regains her Punjabi mindset completely.

            From her infancy, Jasmine had felt that her name was not necessarily right. “My grandmother may have named me Jyoti, Light, but in surviving I was already Jane, a fighter and adapter.” (Mukherjee, 40) Jasmine has felt that she wasn’t in accordance with her name since she could remember; that her grandmother had named her a name that did not completely beseech her. She goes back to her past and what her new husband wants her to change her to. “He wanted to break down the Jyoti I’d been in Hasnapur and make me a new kind of city woman. To break off the past, he gave me a new name: Jasmine. He said, ‘You are small and sweet and heady, my Jasmine. You’ll quicken the whole world with your perfume.’ Jyoti, Jasmine: I shuttled between identities. (Mukherjee, 77) This time, it was not necessarily her controlling who she was due to her name or her name controlling her. It is her husband controlling her and causing her to change by assigning her a name beyond her own grasp.

            Jasmine constantly goes through ups and downs. If the serial killer John Wayne Gacy were to change his name to Pope Benedict IV, he would still be a serial killer at heart. Jasmine is still Jyoti Bijh at heart, an immigrant from a small village in India. “To want English was to want more than you had been given at birth, it was to want the world.” (Mukherjee, 68) Jasmine wanted more than what she had been given at birth. She wanted to become a new person with a new identity.